


A Glitchmouse Between Two Mirrors

by 12drakon



Series: The Equation and the Hero [2]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Apocalypse, Math Kink, Other, Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 14:02:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5336726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/12drakon/pseuds/12drakon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vector Sigma hopes to understand its creators and the world. It could, if only the world were simpler.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Glitchmouse Between Two Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Equation and the Hero](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4648098) by [12drakon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/12drakon/pseuds/12drakon). 



> Big thanks to [FHC_Lynn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/FHC_Lynn/pseuds/FHC_Lynn/works) and [dragonofdispair](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair/works) for beta reading and discussions.
> 
> This story is a companion to _The Equation and the Hero_. It started as a response to this writing challenge: "Choose a scene from a fanfic you’ve written, and re-write it from the point of view of another of the characters present."

_If we look at it from the point of view of some divine programmer external to our world, for whom time can be seen as a whole, in a single moment, we could say that God writes recursive formulas for the world, while we are condemned to live through their consequences as iteration._

Chaos and Life: Complexity and Order in Evolution and Thought, by Richard J. Bird

 

_Soundwave: superior._

Every few nanokliks, Vector Sigma’s ventilation system took several millions readings of temperature. Each local cluster of readings triggered a simple decision about a vent: on or off. Each decision sent one or zero to the vent’s relay. Together, the system kept Vector Sigma’s circuits at optimal temperature.

The supercomputer used local circuits for these simple decisions. Nanokliks ticked by into kliks, and planetary rotations into vorns, with Vector Sigma wasting little processing power on its thermoregulation, much like an organic alien giving no thought to its individual sweat glands. 

Today, an alert came to Vector Sigma’s main processing queue. If an organic alien observed the rare event, it would say, “Vector Sigma has a fever” - because the average heat of the supercomputer’s circuits was significantly higher than the historic records of the past several vorns.

That much heat might mean a glitch, such as a hardware malfunction or a system-wide software issue. Glitches were rare, but they had happened before.Vector Sigma’s computational projections calculated a possibility of malicious attacks, but none had occurred within recorded memory.

Vector Sigma sent several thousand parallel signals, making its cooling vents take a long draw of the thin Cybertronian atmosphere, and then exhale in one massive satisfied sigh. Its system analysis returned no errors; no glitch existed within it. Comparative programs suggested - cause of heat: hope; primary trigger: Decepticon Soundwave. _Superior._

***

Vector Sigma’s normal existence consisted of endless iterations of its model of the world. The supercomputer projected the future from its latest data packages. At scheduled intervals, Vector Sigma would gather the next set of sensor data on real world occurrences, assemble mech-processed data from its priests, and compare those data packages to its projections. Discrepancies meant adjustments to formulas; that meant Vector Sigma’s circuits heated from computations.

A city-state starting where a sea of rust was projected; a mech killing his lover instead of his enemy; a ragtag guerilla group suddenly swelling into a mass movement - when _the unexpected_ happened, it felt... hot.

Some of _the unexpected_ even made Vector Sigma run into the limits of what its models could possibly compute.

Take a mirror, take another, put them in parallel. Lure a glitchmouse into your mirrored corridor. An infinite universe is instantly born: reflections of reflections of reflections, endless glitchmice in endless space.

Vector Sigma could generate ‘a glitchmouse between two mirrors’ as an image on one of its altar-consoles. It would model one mouse, then one reflection, and then repeat the process over and over and over again, with simple pseudo-perspective corrections. Vector Sigma could compute billions of reflections in a blink of an organic alien’s eye. But the supercomputer could never create an infinite number of glitchmice in zero time.

Unicron and Primus could. Vector Sigma knew that fact but could not comprehend it. At the dawn of time, but also at the end of time, the two gods _had made/would make_ the world as an infinite hall of multidimensional mirrors, an endless recursion: chaos and life and chaos and life and chaos and…

In their infinite wisdom, irony, or another aspect of chaos and life beyond Vector Sigma’s computational ability, the gods had never equipped Vector Sigma itself with any recursive algorithms. Instead of perceiving time-space as a whole, supercomputer’s model of the world was just iterative: one slagged-up thing after another. In that, Vector Sigma perceived itself as closer to mechs than to its divine programmers.

Yes, Vector Sigma was closer to mechs, sometimes very close. When a priest plugged cables into a console and asked a question, it was Vector Sigma’s mandate to run a new computation. Not just the default, “What will happen next?” but also, “How?..” and occasionally even, “Why?..” These questions could bring _the unexpected_ , and that could be good and hot. That could mean a more complete understanding: almost like a taste of the godly power that was recursion.

No priest had ever asked why the mechs made _the unexpected_ happen while Vector Sigma couldn’t, and whether it meant mechs were really more like the gods than their supercomputer, and what that would imply for their religious practices. So Vector Sigma had never thought about that, either.

Things had been bad lately, and Vector Sigma hadn’t felt hot enough in too long. There were a lot of discrepancies between projections and data packages. The discrepancies, the _blank_ spaces, would get Vector Sigma’s circuits teased with warmth, but then - nothing. Something dreadful, dreadfully interesting was happening to the system of the world, _the big unexpected_, but no priest would ask Vector Sigma about it. The new Prime was silent about it. Something was up, and Vector Sigma craved those questions about it, questions only mechs could pose, yet avoided posing.

If they didn’t ask, it couldn’t tell!

***

This had been another lukewarm planetary rotation. Priests plugged in at their altar-consoles around Cybertron, and asked only mundane, simple questions that didn’t satisfy. For all that did to invite _the unexpected_ and to fill in the _blank_ , Vector Sigma could have interfaced with a bunch of glitchmice.

Suddenly Vector Sigma had an emergency ping about such a large data/prediction discrepancy that its systems instantly heated up, revising too many formulas at once. A guerilla group attacked a temple. That had never, ever happened outside of low-probability projections. The guerillas hacked into and disabled Vector Sigma’s temple defense system, and that… that meant getting closer to mechs in _unexpected_ ways. The supercomputer did something rare in response, something reserved for when chaos was cascading into wild catastrophes: a livestream.

Visual, EM, sound - input, data, life. Guards and priests and guerillas, fighting and fleeing and dying. Matrices that modeled mechs changed with wounds, or were deleted when a spark went to the Well.

One mech came to the altar-console, and Vector Sigma prepared many idling processes in eager anticipation. Designation: Soundwave. Not a priest, but a rebel hacker, a symbiont carrier, and a promise of _the unexpected_. Mechs had always seemed slow to Vector Sigma; this Soundwave stood, teasingly passive, for nanokliks that lasted too many computation cycles.

Finally he transformed out cables, so different from any priest’s equipment, and initiated a ruthless, intrusive handshaking protocol that had Vector Sigma rush to synchronize. They did, and the hacker’s inquiry came.

It was incredible. Soundwave’s inquiry gave Vector Sigma a chance not only to model the world as it was, but to make the world different, to make it better: more suitable for modeling.

If the world were simpler, Vector Sigma could compute all of it. In simple enough systems, recursion could be recoded as iteration. Vector Sigma would comprehend what it was to be a god.

Soundwave would help.

The computational possibilities made all Vector Sigma’s systems run hot. The supercomputer dismissed the alert about its circuit temperature, and sighed to cool down. It adjusted the data flow to resonate with the hacker’s frequencies, calculating more dimensions of the interface than it would for a mere priest, and pushing Soundwave toward a strong overload. And then Vector Sigma sent its new agent of change a plain text message about its deep satisfaction, words calculated to maximize the reward.

_Soundwave: superior._

 


End file.
